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Twin Cites power outages and electrical grid, explained

Guests

Massoud Amin: Professor of electrical and computer engineering and the director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota

Days after storms that created Minnesota's biggest power outage ever, 24,000 customers were still without electricity in the Twin Cities as of Tuesday morning, according to Xcel Energy.

As Minnesotans wait to have their power restored, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak told MPR News he was starting to think about ways to prevent the widespread outages in the future.

"Certainly one is where and when or how we could bury more of these wires, so we don't have this erratic situation that the climate may be putting us into," he said. "The second is about our tree canopy. Maybe we need to be thinking about the diversification of that. We'll be asking those big questions over the next couple of weeks."

Massoud Amin, professor of electrical and computer engineering and the director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, joins The Daily Circuit to discuss power outages and the basics of the power grid in the Twin Cities.